


Left behind

by Elisexyz



Series: Whumptober 2019 (Black Sails) [7]
Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-28
Updated: 2019-10-28
Packaged: 2021-01-03 16:42:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21182648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Elisexyz/pseuds/Elisexyz
Summary: “The only thing I’m ashamed of is that I didn’t do something to save him when we had the chance. That instead I listened toyou.”





	Left behind

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the "Abandoned" prompt in the Whumptober 2019 event.  
  
A bunch of pain, because Miranda Feelings. I tend to see her relationship with James and Thomas as platonic, so I tagged accordingly, but you can see it however you prefer. The summary is a quote from Episode XIII/2x05. Enjoy!

James comes back only four days after the letter’s arrival. It is a dreadfully long time spent alone, trying to reason herself into acceptance and only managing to let another sob tear through her, yet it is an all too short time to work out how to _tell_ him.

She doesn’t think she could make herself say the words.

Eventually, she doesn’t: James comes back to find her yet again in tears, her looks not presentable even for a common villager on a land of pirates, and as his look of concern and frantic questions send yet another pang of pain through her chest, she only scrambles for the wrinkled letter, pressing it against his palm with trembling fingers.

Shared misery should be a lighter burden, yet she finds it all the more crushing when she sees it reflected on James’ face.

He denies it, with the same force she did at first, when she almost grabbed a pen and started writing back to Peter asking him how _dare_ he jests about such an important matter, tears shining in his eyes as he pulls away from her, starts planning to grab his men and march to London himself.

She remembers him months ago, an identical look on his face the first time they lost Thomas.

_We’re gonna get him out of there_.

Just like then, she already knows that it’s a losing battle. “You can’t,” she echoes her own words, her voice hoarse.

“_Watch_ me,” he roars, entirely prepared to walk out the door, sail on a desperate crusade when it is far too late to do anything at all.

“He’s _gone_.”

Alone in her house, words on a letter killing any hope she might have retained of James eventually succeeding in his intent to save Thomas, one day, she isn’t sure what she was hoping for. She remembers crushing loneliness, a spur of anger at James for having abandoned her alone with this, the grim thought that perhaps it is only fate’s retaliation for having abandoned Thomas first, even if at his own request, because he needed them to be safe more than he needed hope for himself.

She longed not to be alone to face this, she needed to share her tears with the only person who could possibly understand her pain.

“It’s too late,” she says, gentle and pleading for him to just _stop_, as she takes a step in his direction.

James lashes out.

He works himself out of his state of denial, looking at her with desperation soon turned rage, not at Alfred Hamilton, this time, but at _her_. His face twisted by sheer anger is an unexpected blow to the stomach.

“And whose fault _is_ that?!” he yells. “We should have—we should have done _something_! We _abandoned_ him, we—I wanted to _go_ to him, I wanted to _save_ him—”

“You only would have ended up there with him,” she retorts, her eyes stinging and her voice trembling. She has no energy for a fight, but he seems to be ready to throw his full body into one.

“Then so be it!”

She snorts humourlessly, shaking her head. “Do you honestly believe he ever wanted that?”

“At least he would have known that we _tried_,” he says, a world of grief flashing on his face. “He never would have done this if he had known that we were _trying_—” He pauses only for a second, anger once again clawing its way through his desperation. “If we hadn’t followed _your_ plan.”

His words drop like rocks in her stomach, shock freezing her in place for a few seconds.

_This is on you_, he doesn’t say. He doesn’t need to.

She wants to yell. She can feel rage burn in her chest, burn its way up her throat and pushing to come out. She wants to yell at him that this was _his_ fault before hers, that he was supposed to _protect_ Thomas, that Thomas was a wonderful but idealistic and sometimes awfully naïve man, and that James should have known _better_, he should have put a _stop_ to all of this before it could ever turn into such a monumental disaster—

She presses her lips together, James’ face thankfully disappearing in a blur. “Get out,” she chokes out. She’s trembling, she isn’t sure if because she wants to hit something or if she merely needs to sit down. Tears fall down when she blinks, and she quickly wipes them away with the back of her hand before repeating, louder and angrier but never quite enough: “Get _out_!”

James goes, the door slammed shut behind him. She barely manages to scramble her way to a chair before she breaks into sobs.

(He comes back, mere hours later, looking awfully penitent.

“I didn’t mean any of that,” he says, pleads, standing only a short distance from the door as if waiting to be thrown out. She knows he did mean it, at least a little, she knows because a part of her agrees with him, but she doesn’t fight him on it, instead walking up to him, cupping his face into her hands and smiling slightly to let him know that it’s alright, neither of them has to do this alone.

He buries his face into her neck, hands clasping the back of her dress as he trembles against her, and she squeezes him tight enough to hurt.

He is, after all, all that she has left in the world.)

**Author's Note:**

> This story is part of the [LLF Comment Project ](https://longlivefeedback.tumblr.com/llfcommentproject), which was created to improve communication between readers and authors. This author invites and appreciates comments, including: 
> 
>   * Short comments
>   * Long comments
>   * Questions
>   * “<3” as extra kudos
>   * Reader-reader interaction
> 
> If you don’t want a reply, for any reason, feel free to sign your comment with “whisper” and I will appreciate it but not respond!


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